Migrants Performing Citizenship: Participatory Theatre and Walking Methods for Research

This chapter introduces a participatory arts based research project with migrant families, reflecting on how we might think of this research as an act of citizenship. It argues that by working together with migrant mothers and young girls, as well as organisations that focus on the rights of migrant and Black and Minority Ethnic people, we can co-produce knowledge that challenges social exclusion and racist and sexist subjugation of migrant girls and mothers. This project has the potential to not only generate new knowledge and insights, but it also illustrates that participatory arts-based research can be considered an act of citizenship. This is because it contests existing forms of citizenship that inscribe privileges, and brings into being new modes of rights and rights-claiming subjects.